AWR: On the morning of 9/11, what was your first thought when you received word that a plane had struck one of the towers of the World Trade Center?
Sec. Rumsfeld: That it was an accident.
AWR: After the second plane hit the Trade Center towers, what thought entered your mind?
Sec. Rumsfeld: It was clear that it wasn’t an accident. I knew it was an attack of some sort. And it was minutes later than a plane struck the Pentagon, at which point it was relatively apparent that the symbol of economic power, New York City, and military power, the Pentagon, had been hit, and it’s thanks only to the wonderful passengers aboard flight 93 that the White House or the Capital weren’t hit.
AWR: As the events of 9/11 unfolded, you went from a Secretary of Defense serving our country during a time of peace to a Secretary of Defense serving our country in a time of war. In your memoir, “Known and Unknown,” it seemed like this transition came very naturally to you. Was it as easy as your book made it seem? Was it something you had to think about or did you transition subconsciously?
Sec. Rumsfeld: The buildings were burning, including the Pentagon in which I was located, smoke filled the place, bodies were being pulled out, and I had to begin the phone conversations with President George W. Bush and CIA Director George Tenet, among others. Amid such an atmosphere, I suppose you just naturally get into your responsibilities: that’s why you’re there. Therefore, our team came together and we began that process of engaging the problem.
AWR: Because you appeared so resolute, I’m curious enough to ask if there was any time during that day or even the next – any time during 9/11 or 9/12 – where you were shaken?
Sec. Rumsfeld: I didn’t feel shaken, I felt deeply saddened. Several thousand people had been killed, including part of the Pentagon family. And the President was very clear that he considered it an attack on America: not something merely criminal but of a different order. And as such, it was something that the United States government intended to deal with.
AWR: From your memoirs as well, as President Bush’s (“Decision Points”), it’s clear that as early as 9/11 Bush communicated an intention to deal forcefully with the those behind the attacks. Were you confident at that point that Bush had the courage to make good on his stated intentions? What I mean is, did you know Bush well enough to have confidence that he wasn’t just talking?
Sec. Rumsfeld: I had talked to him about this problem (terrorist attacks) in general terms previously. So I was not the slightest bit surprised when he indicated he didn’t intend to simply “pound sand,” but to take whatever steps were needed to see that the American people were protected.
AWR: Did you think the citizens of this country would fully support the steps that were going to have to be taken to do something other than “pound sand”? Were there concerns there?
Sec. Rumsfeld: There are always those types of concerns, and there was such a concern in my mind. In the aftermath of a tragedy like 9/11 there is apprehension in the country, even a fearfulness that there might be additional attacks of that nature. But time changes that, and the more time passes the more people forget the feelings they had on 9/11. Here were are, almost a decade later, and I have seen instances that show the level of concern has diminished significantly.
AWR: As the United States began to put its response to 9/11 into action, which included General Tommy Franks drawing up war plans to go after Al Qaida in Afghanistan, I was struck by the fact you made a conscious effort to stay hands off. In “Known and Unknown,” you discuss how important you believed it was to allow the military commander draw plans according to his expertise. Did your experience with President Lyndon Baines Johnson (LBJ) during the Vietnam War convince you that this was the right course of action to take? You had been privy to his attempts to micromanage that war.
Sec. Rumsfeld: That’s an interesting question. I have a lot of respect for the military commanders. The President is the civilian leader, the Commander in Chief, and the job of the Secretary of Defense is to interface with the President and the combatant commanders in a way that satisfies the Presidential strategic leadership yet fits with the military commanders superior knowledge of tactics, techniques, and procedures. And we developed a very relationship between the President and me and the combatant commanders where we could go back and forth, but 90% of the details were from the combatant commanders.
AWR: When you look back on how the Afghanistan war plan looked and was implemented, are you happy with it?
Sec. Rumsfeld: Certainly. It was very well done. It was the result of a very close relationship between the CIA, with their capabilities and authorities, the Department of Defense, in this case Central Command, and Special Forces, all working in a very creative way with indigenous forces like the Northern and Eastern Alliances, and Pashtun militias in southern Afghanistan. The combination of these was enormously successful against the Taliban.
AWR: Would you say the same about the invasion of Iraq? Would you change that war plan now or are you equally happy with it in retrospect?
Sec. Rumsfeld: It was, of course, a totally different situation. General Franks went through the process again where he briefed the Joint Chiefs of Staff, discussing his war plan with them, and then made calibrations based on their recommendations. He briefed the President and the National Security Council and then adjusted his plan again based on their suggestions and questions. Through the process, Franks fashioned something that was excellent. It had to be changed at the last minute, because the Turkish Parliament would not allow a military division to come through Turkey, yet Franks deserves credit for fashioning a good plan and implementing it.
AWR: In your last answer you spoke of how the Iraq war plan had to be changed at the last minute. There are some people who either don’t seem to understand or don’t want to understand that war plans change and adaptations have to be made once the enemy is engaged. Can you speak to the fluid nature of war fighting?
Sec. Rumsfeld: I think it was Dwight Eisenhower who said, “The war plan is nothing, planning is everything.” Meaning, you need to plan, you to think about it, you need to fashion an approach, but you have to be realistic enough to understand that the plan changes upon first contact with the enemy.
The enemy has a brain: they see what’s happening and they immediately adjust and adapt, which requires the people implementing the initial plan to adjust and adapt to what’s taking place on the ground. The affect of that is that through all those adjustments and adaptations, people who don’t understand how fluid a battle plan can be, come away with misunderstandings about why people did what they did.
My impression is that General Franks fashioned a good plan then adapted it as necessary as he went along.
AWR: As we moved into battle in the Middle East, you made sure to specify those against whom we were going into battle and those against whom we weren’t. For example, in “Known and Unknown,” you recounted how important it was to understand we were not at war with Muslims but with “Islamists.” Can you elaborate?
Sec. Rumsfeld: The world has hundreds of millions of Muslims, the majority of which are peaceful people who go about their business peacefully on a daily basis. There is, however, a radical minority that are Islamists. These are determined to attack the nation-state concept and impose a religious ideology on a large fraction of the people of the world. To achieve these goals they are perfectly willing to kill innocent men, women, and children. Islamists run training programs to teach suicide bombing tactics and Madrasas where they teach their radical ideology to future generations.
And while Islamists happen to be Muslim, they are a very small fraction of the overall Muslim population of the world. So I wanted to be sure Muslims as a whole knew our fight wasn’t with them, but with the radical Islamists, of which Al Qaida was a part.
AWR: During the Bush Presidency we were not hit again with a major attack. Who gets the credit for that?
Sec. Rumsfeld: First of all, I don’t know that anyone thought that would be possible: that we could go so long without being hit again. But the things that President Bush and his administration put in place were effective. Our military was effective. Therefore everything the terrorists wanted to do became harder after 9/11. It was harder for them to communicate, harder to move from one place to another, harder to train people, harder to raise money, and harder to recruit. And Guantanamo Bay has been widely criticized, but it’s a very fine prison, and the military personnel down there do a fine job.
Both indefinite detentions and Guantanamo Bay, which President Obama campaigned against but has since kept in place, were very effective. And two years since Bush left office the indefinite detentions and Guantanamo are still in place.
Why were indefinite detentions and the prison kept in place after being so maligned? Because there are people who need to be kept off the streets or they’re going to kill more Americans, and Guantanamo Bay is great place to send such people.
President Bush was right.
AWR: When you look back on the enhanced interrogation techniques that you approved, what do you think? Were they good?
Sec. Rumsfeld: Sure. I approved the ones that were recommended by the General Counsel that had come up through the chain of command. Approved some that were requested by the combatant commander and disapproved others. These were approvals were for one person, Mohammad al-Qahtani, the so-called 20th hijacker.
Contrary to what seems to be a widely held belief, I did not approve water-boarding. It seems people thought that the Pentagon was water-boarding people but we weren’t. The Pentagon never water-boarded anybody and the CIA only water-boarded three people: and the CIA did that with the Justice Department’s approval and the President’s approval.
I think the techniques that the Department of Defense used were appropriate and I think the ones that the CIA used, while different, were appropriate for them.
AWR: In many ways there is a 180-degree mind-shift in the way the war is viewed now versus the way it was viewed by the Bush administration. One way we see this shift is the current administration’s habit of announcing what our next step is going to be: even going so far as to set and publish dates indicating when we’ll pull out of this military campaign or that one. What do you think of such an approach?
Sec. Rumsfeld: I’ve always believed that it’s desirable to not clarify for your enemies everything you may or may not do. Rather, the goal is to “complixify” things for the enemy so that they’re uncertain about what you might do. I suppose there are other people who see advantages for certainty, believing that announcing a pullout date motivates the governments of Iraq or Afghanistan by letting them know they have a timeline to work on. So there could be a plus from that one standpoint but there’s a minus from the standpoint of de-mystifying things for the enemy.
Let me add that generally speaking, one does want to simplify things for one’s enemy.
AWR: When I walk into my study and look at the books I’ve read, with each book I can recall a major idea the author was communicating. When I look at your book, “Known and Unknown,” I think of three words: “Weakness is provocative.” These words seem to provide an overarching theme to your view of the military. Can you close this interview by explaining why those words are so important to you?
Sec. Rumsfeld: Eisenhower spoke of “peace through strength” and the idea that “weakness is provocative” is simply the backside of that point. To the extent that you are weak, your enemies will attempt to do things that they wouldn’t even think of doing if you were not weak; if you had strength.
In this world, strength dissuades people from engaging in activities that are dangerous to you, but weakness invites them to do things they wouldn’t even consider doing if you were strong.
We must recognize that we live in a dangerous world where weapons have an ever-increasing lethality and it’s our task, if we want peace, to maintain our strength. And to make sure we don’t display the weakness that will entice people into the adventures they otherwise would have avoided.
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